“I’m not giving to what Camp Seymour was. I’m giving to what it is now and will be.” - Aaron Keating, Camp Seymour alumni and donor
More than 40 years ago, Aaron Keating arrived at Camp Seymour as a teenager beginning to figure out who he was and who he wanted to become.
This summer, he watched his child, Ryan, return from Quest, the same wilderness experience Aaron completed as a teen. Ryan talked about canoeing, hiking, spending hours alone in reflection, and taking on leadership within their group. Aaron recognized pieces of his own experience in what Ryan described.
For Aaron, seeing that growth unfold a generation later has added another chapter to a relationship with the YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties that has shaped much of his life. It also helped inspire his decision to include Camp Seymour in his planned giving.
A Place to Figure Out Who You Are
Aaron’s first major Camp Seymour experience was Quest, which he joined around age 15. The trip introduced him to intentional leadership, goal setting while also giving him a social environment that felt different from school.
“Camp in particular felt like a place where I could really be me and learn a lot,” Aaron said.
He remembers that time as the beginning of a much larger process of understanding himself.
“I feel like it keeps me connected to who I was, who I am, and who I’m becoming,” he shared. “Which, in a way, is a lot of what I first began to think about and learn about as a young person at Camp Seymour.”
His involvement quickly expanded. Aaron participated in YMCA teen leadership programs including the Pacific Regional Conference (PRC), and Youth & Government, worked at camp through high school and college, and eventually returned to Camp Seymour professionally. From roughly 1998 to 2002, he served in leadership roles that included assistant camp director and summer camp director.
Eventually, Aaron decided he wanted to help shape the broader world young people were growing up in. He has now spent nearly two decades working in public policy and the nonprofit sector. He can trace part of that path back to Youth & Government.
“So much about who I am comes from this place,” he said.
Watching Ryan Grow
Ryan began attending Camp Seymour at age 7 and has returned year after year. This summer, they completed Quest themselves. In the fall, Ryan plans to take another step in Aaron’s footsteps by joining a YMCA teen leadership program themselves for the first time.
For Ryan, camp has become a place for growth, confidence, and reflection.
“I think it’s really helped me become more confident, both in who I am as a person and how I know I can impact people around me,” Ryan said.
They also described camp as the place where the YMCA’s values become real.
“The core values aren’t just words anymore,” Ryan reflected. “They’re like an actual way of living and experiencing the world.”
For Aaron, hearing Ryan describe their Quest experience brought the full-circle nature of their connection into focus. He had completed the same trip about 40 years earlier.
“You’re on a journey that you’re in a place where I’ve walked or paddled, but your journey is your own,” Aaron recalled writing to Ryan.
He said seeing Ryan begin to understand their own agency has been especially meaningful.
“To see Ryan getting to have the opportunity, that just fills me with a lot of joy and hope for them,” Aaron said.
Camp is also something Aaron and Ryan now get to enjoy together in the present. Ryan is a fan of gaga ball, and the two took time to play a round together. It was a shared camp experience in a relationship with Camp Seymour that now spans two generations.
Paying Forward What He Received
When Aaron recently updated his will, he decided to include planned gifts to Camp Seymour and the YMCA Center for Community Impact.
The commitment builds on a long history of supporting Camp Seymour. In addition to regular giving, years earlier Aaron, his brother Dmitri, and his mother Kay purchased an engraved brick with the family’s name on it to support the new lodge built at camp.
Aaron has spent his career in nonprofit work and does not describe himself as wealthy. Planned giving offered a way to make a meaningful future contribution from the assets he has spent decades building.
For him, the decision came back to the influence the YMCA has had on his own life and the impact he continues to see it have on young people.
“If I can find a way to make some kind of significant gift,” he said, “It would be a way to pay forward some of what I got from the Y.”
Aaron also emphasized that he is supporting the future of Camp Seymour, not trying to preserve one particular version of it.
“I’m not giving to what camp was,” he said. “I’m giving to what it is now and will be.”
He trusts future staff leaders to continue adapting the experience to meet the needs of young people and the community.
One Link in the Chain
Aaron is hesitant to talk about his own “legacy.” He prefers to think of Camp Seymour as a chain built by generations of people who have each played a part in carrying its work forward.
“I’m just one link in the chain,” he said. “And it’s a privilege to be a link in that chain.”
Now, Ryan is becoming a part of that chain as well.
Camp, Aaron said, has given him a connection to his own history - “the hard experiences, the embarrassing experiences, the great experiences, the growth experiences,” - while continuing to shape what comes next.
Through planned giving, he hopes to make sure future young people have the same opportunity to discover who they are, what they value, and who they want to become.